pigments or figments, or whatever we may call them; for what would anyone think that heard your worship calling a barber’s basin Mambrino’s helmet without ever seeing the mistake all this time, but that one who says and maintains such things must have his brains addled? I have the basin in my sack all dinted, and I am taking it home to have it mended, to trim my beard in it, if, by God’s grace, I am allowed to see my wife and children some day or other.”
“Look here, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “by him thou didst swear by just now I swear thou hast the most limited understanding that any squire in the world has or ever had. Is it possible that all this time thou hast been going about with me thou hast never found out that all things belonging to knights-errant seem to be illusions and nonsense and ravings, and to go always by contraries? And not because it really is so, but because there is always a swarm of enchanters in attendance upon us that change and alter everything with us, and turn things as they please, and according as they are disposed to aid or destroy us; thus what seems to thee a barber’s basin seems to me Mambrino’s helmet, and to another it will seem something else; and rare foresight it was in the sage who is on my side to